1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of artificial devices known as electronic noses for detecting chemical species.
2. Description of the Related Art
An electronic nose typically includes two components, an array of chemical sensors and a pattern-recognizer. The array “sniffs” vapors from a sample and provides a set of measurements; the pattern-recognizer compares the pattern of the measurements to stored patterns for known chemical species for identification of the sniffed vapor. Gas sensors tend to have very broad selectivity, and respond differently to different chemical species. This is a disadvantage in many applications, but in the electronic nose, it is utilized as an advantage. Although every sensor in an array may respond to a given chemical, these responses will usually be different. The pattern recognizer evaluates the responses and through predetermined, programmed, or learned patterns ascertains the chemical species affect on the gas sensor.
Recently, attention has been directed to chemically resistive microsensors, which are based on a polymer approach employing insulating polymers and conducting carbon black. In these microsensors, no individual sensor is highly selective toward an individual analyte or chemical species. Some works have shown that chemically sensitive resistors, formed from composites of carbon black with insulating organic polymers, are broadly responsive to a variety of odors. The classification and identification of organic vapors are made through the application of pattern recognition methods. So, the resistance change of sensors can be measured to obtain information about organic gases, as the sensors are exposed to gases.
Among the various electrodes, interdigitated microelectrode arrays have been used where particularly low detection limits are needed. These arrays show higher sensitivities than the conventional electrodes, such as circle electrodes in the area of the gas sensors. Yet, these sensors as reported in the literature have fairly slow response times (e.g., 10 s for detecting concentrations of 400 to 2000 ppm).
The electronic nose can match complex samples with subjective endpoints such as odor or flavor, determining for example when milk has turned sour or when a batch of coffee beans optimally roasted. For instance, the electronic nose can match a set of sensor responses to a calibration set produced by the human taste panel or olfactory panel routinely used in food science. The electronic nose can be used as a production tool to maintain quality over long periods of time.
Several commercial electronic-nose type sensors available are based on either metal oxide or intrinsically-conducting polymers (ICP) as the sensor element. The ones based on polymers include AromaScan™, Bloodhound™, AlphaMOS™ and Zellweger™ analytics devices. Specifically, the AromaScan™ electronic nose, for example, has 32 different sensors in its array, each of which will in general exhibit a specific change in electrical resistance when exposed to air containing an odor. The selective interaction of odors with the sensors produces a pattern of resistance changes for each odor. If an odor is composed of many chemicals, the pattern will be the result of their combined interactions with all of the sensors in the array. It has also been found that the response of the array to varying concentrations of the same odor is non-linear.
In many of the commercial electronic nose sensors, polypyrrole (with different counter ions) electrodeposited as a film across a 10-50 micron gap on a gold interdigitated electrode is commonly used in these sensors. These commercial e-noses have been used to detect spoilage of food, growth of microorganisms, and have been used in medical applications.
Polymers that are typically insulators have been used in e-nose applications by using a conductive filler such as carbon black in the fibers. The filler level is controlled to be near the conduction percolation threshold to obtain high-gain sensors. When exposed to a volatile organic compound (VOC), the polymer swells and its resistance is changed. Spin casting of these polymers over an electrode surface is the conventional technique used to fabricate the commercial polymer-based electronic nose sensors. Multicomponent polymer arrays have been used in commercial devices to generate unique patterns or “fingerprints” associated with different VOCs. The Cyrano C 320™ e-nose system, for instance, uses 32 sensors.
Previously, commercial electronic nose devices used polymer films either electrodeposited or spin-coated on gold electrode assemblies. The response time for these composite assemblies (as given above) is a function determined by the diffusion kinetics of the vapors through polymer film, and is therefore long.